TRUMP ECONOMIC ADVISORY COUNCIL

1. Tom Barrack. Thomas J Barrack Jr. is the Founder and Executive Chairman of Colony Capital, NYSE (CLNY). Colony is one of the oldest and most well-recognized private equity firms in the world. Prior to forming Colony, Mr. Barrack was a Principal of the Robert M. Bass Group and had served in the Regan administration as a Deputy Undersecretary of Interior.

2. Stephen M. Calk. Calk is the Founder, Chairman and CEO Federal Savings Bank, and National Bancorp Holdings, which is primarily focused on increasing home ownership among veterans of the Armed Forces. He is a commissioned Army Officer and received his M.B.A. from Northwestern University. Under his leadership, the Federal Savings Bank was named the most profitable bank in America in its class by the American Bankers Association Journal.

3. Dan DiMicco. DiMicco has served as Executive Chairman of the Nucor Corporation, the largest steel producer in America. He was the longest serving CEO of Nucor outside of the company’s founder. Mr. DiMicco has served on the board of the United States Manufacturing Council. He is the author of the book, American Made: Why Making Things Will Return Us To Greatness, which lays the blueprint of how to return America to economic prosperity through a revitalization of manufacturing.

4. Steven Feinberg. Feinberg is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. Mr. Feinberg has led the firm since its inception in 1992 and has developed Cerberus into one of the world’s leading deep value asset management firms. Cerberus manages affiliated funds and accounts with over $30 billion of assets under management in four complimentary strategies: Private Equity (operationally challenged companies, non-core/under-performing divisions or subsidiaries and businesses undergoing restructuring); Distressed Securities and Assets; Corporate Middle-Market Lending; and Distressed Real Estate. Prior to founding Cerberus, Mr. Feinberg managed capital for Gruntal & Co. from 1985 to 1992. He began his career at Drexel Burnham Lambert, where he traded proprietary pools of capital. Mr. Feinberg is a graduate of Princeton University.

5. Dan Kowalski. Kowalski has served as the Deputy Staff Director of the Republican staff of the Senate Budget Committee, and has over 20 years of experience in fiscal policy at the federal, state, and local levels of government. Previously, he also served as the Director of Budget Review for the Republican staff of the House Budget Committee. In those two positions, Dan helped Congress adopt several balanced budgets on a bicameral basis. Dan has a Master’s degree in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

6. Howard M. Lorber. Lorber is currently the President and CEO of Vector Group Ltd., a NYSE listed company engaged in the real estate and consumer products industries. Mr. Lorber has actively managed Vector’s diversified interests since 1994. He serves as Chairman of Douglas Elliman Realty, LLC, one of the nation’s oldest and largest real estate brokerage firms; Vice Chairman of Ladenburg Thalmann Financial Services Inc.; Executive Chairman of Nathan’s Famous Inc.

7. David Malpass. Malpass has served as Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary under President Reagan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under President George W. Bush. Mr. Malpass has extensive private sector experience and has founded Encima Global, a consulting and research firm that provides insight and analysis on global economic and political trends.

8. Steven Mnuchin. Currently serving as Finance Chairman for Donald J. Trump for President. He is Chairman and CEO of Dune Capital Management LP, a private investment firm and previously served as Chairman and CEO of OneWest Bank Group LLC. He has over 30 years of experience in the private sector with extensive management and investment experience especially in Banking, financial services, real estate, media, and technology.

10. Stephen Moore. Moore is a well respected economist, and was the founder of Club For Growth. Mr. Moore has served on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, and is now the chief economist for the Heritage Foundation. Mr. Moore was the senior economist of the Joint Economic Committee under Chairman Dick Armey (R-TX).

11. Peter Navarro. Navarro is an expert on U.S.-China trade relations, and holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He is currently a professor of economics and public policy at the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine.

12. John Paulson. John Paulson is the President and Portfolio Manager of Paulson & Co. Inc. (“Paulson”). Paulson is an SEC-registered investment management company specializing in global merger, event arbitrage and credit strategies. The firm was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in New York with offices in London and Hong Kong. Mr. Paulson received his Masters of Business Administration with high distinction, as a Baker Scholar, from Harvard Business School in 1980. He graduated summa cum laude in Finance from New York University’s College of Business and Public Administration in 1978. Prior to forming Paulson in 1994, John was a general partner of Gruss Partners and a managing director in mergers and acquisitions at Bear Stearns.

13. Steven Roth. Roth is Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Vornado Realty Trust. Mr. Roth is the co-founder and Managing General Partner of Interstate Properties and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Alexander's Inc. Barron's Magazine, in its March 2005, 2006 and 2007 issues named Mr. Roth one of the World's Thirty Most Respected CEO's. In its January 2006 issue on the Best CEO's in America, Institutional Investor magazine designated Mr. Roth as the top CEO in the REIT industry.

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Hillary for America
August 7, 2016

Cheat Sheet on Trump’s Economic Advisors

Donald Trump just released his team of top economic advisors – an important announcement for someone with no economic policy experience. And who made the cut? There are six guys named Steve – but not a single woman or person of color. There are Trump’s billionaire buddies who have sought to profit off the misfortune of American families and who have bankrolled his businesses and his campaign. There’s a supply-side economist peddling the same policies that led to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. There’s the former chief economist of Bear Stearns as it failed and received a taxpayer bailout in the 2008 financial crisis. And they are some of the top donors of the campaign, advising him on policy areas where they have significant financial interests.

Trump’s “economic advisors” are a collection of his billionaire buddies and personal bankers who’ve gotten him out of jams – and several major donors to his campaign. The list is dominated by billionaires who have bankrolled his campaign – and who have bailed him out when his businesses run into trouble. Trump likes to talk about standing up to special interests. Instead, he’s put them in charge of his economic policies.

• Andy Beal, the advisor Trump wants to put “in charge of [negotiations with] China,” loaned him more than half a billion dollars during his various bankruptcies and failed business ventures.
• Five of Trump’s advisors – Andy Beal, Stephen Feinberg, Steve Mnuchin, Tom Barrack, and Howard Lorber – have given over $2 million to the Trump Victory Committee.

One of his top advisors is the former chief economist at Bear Stearns – who insisted the economy was fine as the crisis began. Bear Stearns was the first major firm to go down during the financial crisis as a result of its catastrophically risky investments, receiving a $13 billion taxpayer bailout. But, according to David Malpass, concerns about the economy were overblown in 2007, when he wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Don’t panic about the credit market.” He even tried to convince the American people that the economy would be fine right up until the day Bear Stearns was bought for pennies on the dollar. Like Trump, Malpass made millions and left investors, and American taxpayers, holding the bag.

Like Trump, his “economic advisors” profit off of economic crises. Trump has a habit of rooting for crises. He actually rooted for the housing crisis, noting that he’d be able to make money off a crisis that ultimately cost 9 million workers their jobs and more than 5 million families their homes. Now, Donald Trump has surrounded himself with men who profit off economic crises and business practices that hurt working Americans.

• John Paulson famously made his fortune betting on the housing crisis, when 5 million Americans lost their home. And, to top it off, he was a protagonist in the infamous ABACUS deal, in which Goldman Sachs paid more than half a billion in fines for a fraud.
• OneWest, a mortgage company under the leadership of Steven Mnuchin, aggressively pushed homeowners into foreclosure during the crisis.
• Tom Barrack is credited with creating the first vulture fund for savings and loan debt during the 1990s savings and loans crisis. He also profited off home foreclosures following the 2008 financial crisis by snatching up homes that were foreclosed.
• Andy Beal hired hundreds of additional staffers to buy up loans and assets during the financial crisis, then fired them once the shopping spree ended.
• As the CEO of Nucor Corporation, the second largest American steel company, DiMicco moved nearly one-third of their production overseas and outsourced steel jobs.

Trump’s “economic advisors” look a lot like Trump. There’s not a whole lot of diversity on Trump’s economic council.

• NYT: Trump’s Economic Team: Bankers and Billionaires (and All Men)
• Washington Post: Trump’s economic team has six men named Steve but no women
• Bloomberg: Trump Names Economy Team of Rich Men Who Look a Lot Like Him

Trump’s team of “economic advisors” are blind believers in trickle-down economics who will not hold Wall Street accountable. They want tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of everyday Americans, and they will shred the protections that keep Wall Street banks from destroying Main Street like they did during the financial crisis.

Wall Street reform

• Stephen Calk said Dodd-Frank would be “absolutely devastating.”
• Stephen Moore said that Congressional Republicans “should repeal all or part of the Dodd-Frank bill.”
• David Malpass complained that financial reform will “cost New Yorkers thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in revenue.”

Taxes

• Harold Hamm’s oil company, Continental Resources, only paid an average effective tax rate of 2.2% for at least 5 years because of special tax breaks for the oil industry. When Hamm thought the spigot of tax breaks was about to run dry, he appealed to Congress to keep the tax loophole open.
• David Malpass has advocated for tax cuts for the rich in the form of historically low tax rates on capital gains.
• In 2012, Stephen Moore advised Kansas governor Sam Brownback to sharply slash income taxes in his state, claiming the reductions would provide a “near immediate and permanent” boost to the economy.  But in fact, by 2014, Kansas wasn’t booming. According to Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman, because of the advice of Moore and other “charlatans and cranks,” Kansas’s economy [was] lagging both neighboring states and America as a whole” and the state’s budget had “plunged deep into deficit, provoking a Moody’s downgrade of its debt.”

Trump’s “economic advisors” have criticized Trump in the past – and even praised Hillary Clinton. There is dissent in the ranks of Trump’s team of economic advisors. Not only have they come out against his destructive and risky policies, several of them have supported his opponents, including Hillary Clinton.

• Stephen Moore has said he “[doesn’t] like [Trump’s] protectionist trade policies” and that Trump’s proposed high tariffs on China were “not going to work and will do more harm than good.”
• Dan DiMicco is an outspoken advocate of free trade and has defended NAFTA and CAFTA.
• Peter Navarro said that restricting imports with “trade barriers, tariffs and quotas [would] threaten New Jersey’s economic health” and that “all the workers involved in the export-import trade... are hurt by protectionism because our trading partners retaliate.’” [The Policy Game, 1985; New York Times, 1/6/85]
• Unlike Trump, David Malpass defended the trade deficit and said it was good for the U.S. economy.  
• Stephen Moore criticized Trump’s reckless immigration policies: “We believe that deporting 11 million people is unworkable, and we hope in the end Mr. Trump comes to this same conclusion.”
• Tom Barrack has said that Hillary Clinton would do “a good job” as president and that she “is a tremendously competent person. It would be insane to say that she is not competent or qualified for the presidency. She is amazingly competent.”

For Immediate Release, August 7, 2016